RÄ DI MARTINO
ABANDONED MOVIE SETS
2011 hasselblad series, archival pigment prints 70 x 70 cm Ruins of film sets abandoned in southern Morocco. The recreation of Ancient Greek and Egyptian temples make a peculiar phenomenon in their current ruined state. While Hollywood made pristine fictional adaptions of real temples, in order to fake a historic setting, the sets today can be found in a similarly ruined state. This process of decay forms a microcosm of historic aging, the sets reaching the point of dilapidation we see in real Ancient ruins in a matter of years rather than thousands of years. The images reveal their true nature on closer inspection as metal framework protrudes and hollow facades peal back.
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AUGUST 2008
2009 16mm film 5' Two actors create a sort of tableau-vivant; a frozen moment from what seems a movie from the 50's. Suddenly they start singing the news, all from August 2008 headlines, in a minimalistic chorus. With actress Maya Sansa and musician Mauro Remiddi.
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THE RED SHOES
2007 16mm film 4'45'' The video recalls a story and resembles something, a hazy memory or dream, from somewhere. The film appears to be part of a feature film, perhaps one that we have seen, but can't quite remember the name. It can be read as found footage, a fake found footage.
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THE NIGHT WALKER
2008 single & double channel video, installation, LP album The Night Walker (whose title is inspired by William Castle’s horror film) takes its starting point with the story of a man terrified by everything, that as an anaesthetic for his sufferings, decides to collect biographies of famous people, by focusing exclusively on the moment of their birth and death. His history, told through the voice-over of an actor (Stephen Campbell Moore), becomes the subject of the song’s composition (The Night Walker) of the Londoner duo Smoke Machine, whose making-of is the central element of the work. The other element is the study or portrait of a man’s face, who could be the protagonist of the story and the songs. The video installation is accompanied by a 7 inches album with the songs that were developed in the video.
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THE DANCING KID
2008-2005 double channel video installation A two-channel video in which we follow a man who seems to be lost in a desert performing his daily activities, or maybe he is on Mars… (actually filmed in Death Valley, CA). It’s not clear who he is or why he is there. The camera follows him almost like in a documentary and the result is an ensemble of moments. At times he bursts into re-enacting scenes from the film Johnny Guitar, the 1956 Nicolas Ray film with Joan Crawford, showing off playfully to the camera. This video is inspired by both thìs cult western movie with two women protagonists and to the Mars Society, a group of people who enjoys talking about possible life on Mars and goes once a year to pretend life on Mars in a desert on this world.
With Stephen Campbell Moore |
LA CAMERA
2006 16mm film 12' A collaboration with the LUCE Archive in Cinecittà, Rome. This archive holds most of the cine-news from 1930 to 1970. The audio of some of these old news-reels in particular the ones who chronicle the advent of television set as a normal domestic accessory. These audio alternates with interviews to people who recount personal, intimate TV memories. Two actors, displaced on a hill and framed by a wooden “drawn-like” perspective of a room, re-enact verbatim all the voices.
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